Advent Memories Day 5 : Christmas Eve in CoMo

I mentioned in another post that my family doesn't keep a whole lot of traditions.  When Beth started college and we started celebrating Christmas in Columbia, we did come up with our own new Christmas Eve tradition.  Like I mentioned before, my church had two services...one at 6pm and one at midnight.  They were not the same, so we chose to go to both.  After the 6pm service, we always drove straight to Olive Garden where one of us would run in to pick up a salad and breadsticks to-go (who doesn't love their salad & breadsticks?  I confess that even in the midst of all the amazing NYC restaurants, I have gone to the Olive Garden in Times Square twice since I've lived here just to get a taste of that salad goodness).  After the Olive Garden pit-stop, we'd head home where we'd be greeted with soup my mom had made...I can't remember what kind of soup we had, but I do remember that we loved this meal of soup and salad!  After our dinner, we'd load back in the car and ride around town looking at Christmas lights.  My mom usually had an article from the newspaper with her that listed the best lit houses around town.  They were often out in the boonies, but I think we usually managed to find them.  Dinner then lights was just the perfect amount of activity to get us back to church for the midnight candle light service...where we always lit our candles to the tune of Silent Night.